Nicaraguan historiography is extremely uneven in both quality and quantity. While much of the country’s history remains poorly researched, certain events have attracted enormous attention, notably the proposed inter-oceanic canal in the nineteenth century; the U.S. occupation in the first third of the twentieth century; the Sandino episode; and, more recently, the Sandinista revolution.

The international attention devoted to Nicaragua since the collapse of the Somoza dynasty in 1979 has created a demand for comprehensive bibliographies, previously a neglected area. The most impressive is the three-volume Nicaraguan National Bibliography, 1800–1978, produced by the Latin American Bibliographic Foundation (Redlands, Calif, 1986–7), with more than 20, 000 entries. A more modest, but useful, bibliography is Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Nicaragua (Oxford 1983), in the World Bibliographical Series. For the post-1979 period, there is such a rapid increase in publications every year that any bibliography runs the risk of being out-of-date as soon as it is published. Hans Aalborg, however, has compiled a helpful work for the first five years of the revolution: The Nicaraguan Development Process (Copenhagen, 1984), while a comprehensive bibliography on political economy covering most of the period of Sandinista rule (1979–90) is contained in CRIES, La politica económica en Nicaragua 1979–88 (Managua, 1989).

The Nicaraguan revolution inspired a number of authors to attempt general works on the country’s history. Among the best are Alberto Lanuza, Juan Luis Vázquez, Amaru Barahona and Amalia Chamorro, Economía y sociedad en la construcciín del estado en Nicaragua (San José, C. R., 1983); David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London, 1988) and F. Lainez, Nicaragua: Colonialismo espanol, yanki y ruso (Guatemala City, 1987).